The invention provides a dopant gettering semiconductor processing technique for selectively photochemically activating an otherwise benign reactant to remove dopant from a substrate.
In various semiconductor processing operations, it is difficult to control various processing parameters, particularly thermally driven deposition, diffusion and the like. The resultant dopant concentration in the semiconductor substrate lattice in turn may vary, which is undesirable in high precision applications. In order to ensure sufficient dopant concentration and the desired electrical charactertistics, the semiconductor layer is typically overdoped, and then a gettering agent is used to remove some of the dopant to achieve the desired concentration.
The present invention provides a particulary simple and efficient dopant gettering technique which can be used to obtain a more uniform dopant concentration.